"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard

Columns by Glen Allport

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
With popular celebrity-killer Charles Manson having signed on for the second debate, the People's Socialist Conservative Party debate series was now assured of higher ratings and, finally, a real impact on the nation's voters.
Popular mega-killers defecting from the near-defunct Old Power Parties had participated in the first...

Column by Glen Allport.
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(Spoilers throughout)
"The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy," they write, "while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
~ Princeton...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The Internet has been on fire lately with allegations that 77-year old Bill Cosby drugged and raped more than a dozen women over the years. Yikes.
Cosby was a popular stand-up comedian in the 1960s and has been a major show-business success ever since. He did an Emmy-winning stint as co-star of the ground-breaking I, Spy series (banned in parts of the...

Column by Glen Allport.
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P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }A:link { }( Liberty plus Non-Political Support for Compassion )
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The Yearning for a Compassionate World
Most people clearly want a more compassionate world; I certainly do. We differ on how to get there. Many mistake their own sense of compassion as an argument in favor of political movements that claim...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The dangers inherent in superintelligent machines have inspired any number of science fiction books, films, and short stories. From Asimov's I, Robot series (and the 2004 movie of the same name starring Will Smith) to James Cameron's Terminator and its sequels, from Johnny Depp's recent Transcendence to the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey,...

Column by Glen Allport.
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I bought “The Lone Ranger” on Blu-Ray this week and enjoyed it even more than I had in the theater – it's a fun, big-budget summer action movie. Then as the credits rolled, I sat and cried for about 15 minutes.
“The Lone Ranger” has been a financial disaster for Disney, despite the fabulous Johnny Depp performance...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
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If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Part 5 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
In Part 3 of this series, Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift, I made the case that Statism, via widespread use of coercion and constant violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, has set in motion the destruction of the Earth's biosphere, bringing us...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
- 1...

Column by Glen Allport.
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"If you can understand why a bathtub empties when the drain is opened, you can understand why Americans are now as poor as church mice."
Not long ago, we Americans were rich; now we are poor. How did that happen?
Actually, Americans are worse than "poor" – Americans are staggeringly indebted, in debt beyond...

Column by Glen Allport.
Part 4 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
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My previous column – Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift – describes our current situation, including the dead-serious threat that the Fukushima disaster poses to the entire planet, and how we got here. In this column, I will describe...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Scientific consensus is emerging that people are fundamentally empathic, kind, fair-minded, and cooperative. Yet these characteristics are being undermined by widespread emotional damage and a corrupt system of coercive governance.
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Why So Much Darkness Staining the Light?
"The divine within me...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Hidden yet Fundamental Connections
I am fascinated by quantum mechanics, and particularly by what is called the quantum enigma (also known as the measurement problem). Among the most startling aspects of this enigma is that consciousness and physical reality are connected in some fashion, such that at the quantum level – the...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The Word
** Love. **
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Start of Commentary Section:
The Word is Complete in Itself
Nothing more is needed, because love includes non-aggression: you don't aggress against others if you love them. The Doctrine of Love and Freedom is thus completely contained in the single word...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Almost unnoticed amongst the glitter and wonder of modern sci-tech is that the basic, foundational truths of classical liberalism are now exceptionally well supported by science. If you want a society that produces physically and emotionally healthy people and that fosters prosperity, innovation, and peace, you want – you need – both...

Column by Glen Allport.
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[Part 2 of a five-part series]
How the Idea of Civil Society was Destroyed
In the second half of the 1800s, the nascent civil society in the United States, with its classical liberal worldview – including the understanding that society should embody both liberty and compassion – began giving way to the modern Left...

Column by Glen Allport.
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[A five-part series]
Part 1: Civil Society Requires Non-Aggression (and one thing more)
Unless you're a hard-core libertarian, you probably haven't heard much about the non-aggression principle, or NAP. That's a shame, because the NAP is what would have saved the world from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, from the BP Gulf of Mexico spill (and...

Column by Glen Allport.
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This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Hello Wesley,
I loved your Libertarian Dilemma: Anarchy or Minarchy? in today’s Humble Libertarian (March 22, 2011). Since founding the site, you’ve shown a knack for asking interesting questions and a willingness to consider views outside your comfort zone. In this new column, you say, among other things, that “I am...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
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In plain language, there is no good reason for the unfolding Social Security nightmare. Yes, the Baby Boomers are retiring, but so what? It's a big group, but this same big group has been paying into Social Security their whole adult lives. It's not like the money hasn't been set aside or anything.
Right?
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Of course,...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information
"When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next."
CCR...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Be very cautious when hearing any argument against someone that relies on a sneering tone. To put it bluntly, decent people don't use such tactics.
On the web are blog posts and columns that attempt to link Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization to Israel, or to the Rothschilds, or to the CIA. WikiLeaks, these pieces insist, is a...

Column by Glen Allport.
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(Paper is so Fifteenth Century)
A Review of Amazon's E-Book Software and the Devices it Runs On
I resisted ebooks until recently, despite my somewhat geeky background. I've been a heavy reader since childhood, which means that books – real books, printed-on-paper books – have been a big part of my life for a darn long...

By Glen Allport.
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The Blessings of True Regulation in a Civil Society
Many things should be regulated – for health and safety, for protection against fraud, and for other reasons.
Regulation is a normal function of civil society. We don't want to get electrocuted when we touch a toaster or vacuum cleaner, for example, and the makers of...

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". . . a power too great and terrible to imagine."
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on Blu-Ray in April, which reminded me that I hadn't seen the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, since its theatrical release in 2001. While watching the film again I was struck anew with its abolitionist message – a message...

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[Spoilers ahead]
A month after its opening, “Avatar” has brought in more than $1.8 billion worldwide and is still packing theaters, which suggests that it may become the first film to pull in $2 billion or more.
There are many reasons “Avatar” is so popular – it is visually gorgeous and inventive, it tells a good story, and the film's casting...

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"'A lot more people were living on the edge than we ever even anticipated,' Haynes said. 'So many people were just barely making it. It's absolutely shocking.'"
~ Hospitality House spokesman Barry Frost, quoted in Economy Creates Newly Homeless by Kimberly Edds, OC Register, December 11, 2009
"There is no normality and no recovery. You cannot spend...

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The Law
Some years ago, noted philosopher Ringo Starr described an important and now-famous discovery: "Everything government touches turns to crap."
That observation clearly deserves elevation in status from the mere "something Ringo said" to the more formal Ringo's Law. Ringo's Law generates accurate predictions and explains events in useful fashion;...

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May 29, 2009
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Behind the Mask, Systematic Evil
After centuries and millennia of tyranny, war, mass murder, torture, corruption, legalized theft, unjust imprisonment, economic devastation, and other needless evil, isn't it finally time we banned the cause of all that horror?
Can we not find the strength to end this intrusive, violent, coercive scam -- this conspiracy...

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April 6, 2009
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Will Misperceiving Evil be the End of Humanity?
Some of the worst mass-murderers in history -- many of them, in fact -- are idols and folk heroes to millions of people, not for what the mass-murderers actually did, but for what those murderers and their supporters said about and wanted to believe about the mass-murderers. In many cases, the people idolizing...

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March 30, 2009
- Introduction -
In Marooned in the Quantum Wrongness Field (April 2007), I took a humorous look at a serious subject: the wrong-headed common beliefs underpinning much of the violence, injustice, and misery in this world.
Some believe that no actual "quantum field of wrongness" exists, but in fact the entire universe -- from electric charge to light and...

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February 26, 2009
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Deeper into the Wrongness
I described the common state of Wrongness in Marooned in the Quantum Wrongness Field (April, 2007). Today, the public is predictably being lured ever-deeper into Wrongness by propaganda about the economic crisis. Among other things, we are told that adding trillions of dollars in new federal debt and printing oceans of new money-...

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The List
[ *** null set *** ]
There are no formerly-poor nations that have adopted socialist governments and then become prosperous.
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A Note on Terminology
The public's definition of "socialism...

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- Introduction -
Part One of this column discussed the economic situation and government action, and several readers complained that I was not cheerful or optimistic in my views. Today's column won't be any more upbeat, I am afraid, although I do offer some positive notes and suggestions in the final section...

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"What the Bail-Out does is saddle the country and all its 'taxpayers' with new trillions of debt and makes it such that every 'taxpayer', regardless of how wise, cautious and frugal he may be, owes loads of Federal Reserve Notes (money) to the Federal Reserve Banking system. What will the 'taxpayers' receive for this new tax saddle? The answer is that they have received and...

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October 7, 2008
"Trends which cannot continue, don't." -- Attributed to Warren Buffett and others
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The most obvious trend which cannot continue today is the maintenance of prosperity in America by means of ever-increasing debt and monetary inflation. The America we grew up in, the America we are used to -- in terms of not only prosperity but also...

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"It would seem that given a good start in life, almost any kind of stress can be withstood later on."
— Arthur Janov, The Feeling Child, 1973, p. 144
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Strength and Warmth, Amidst Devastation and Pain
Occasionally...

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in·trin·sic (¹n-tr¹n“z¹k, -s¹k) adj. 1. Of or relating to the essential nature of a thing; inherent. --in·trin“si·cal·ly adv. ~ from the 1994 on-disk edition of The American Heritage Dictionary
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Does...

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Last week we looked at trends for the economy and for government action, and found the situation less than optimal, in much the same way that an outbreak of Ebola in your neighborhood would be less than optimal.
This week we consider the situation for commodities (and in particular oil and metals),...

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June 30, 2008
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2008's First Half
So far, 2008 has been a thrill ride of the worst kind: The Dow has given back nearly all its gains for the last two years, housing prices and sales continue dropping with "no sign of a bottom" (per S&P spokesman David M. Blitzer, quoted in Housing prices post record declines at CNNMoney.com), prices for food and other...

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May 19, 2008
Among the most common objections to a non-coercive, civil society is the funding question: "Where would money for X or Y come from, without taxes?" The obvious answer is that the money would come from the same place it comes from now: the people. There is no magic "funding fairy" to supply government with money; all government money comes from the...

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April 21, 2008
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Why the Public Can't Think Straight
We all know that the government lies to us, that it uses propaganda to support the lies, and that, for the most part, the corporate media is an integral part of the government/power elite propaganda machine. These things are obvious to any American with even a room-temperature IQ. For that matter, it's hard to think of any...

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March 24, 2008
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The Chinese are at it again, murdering peaceful Buddhist monks and Tibetan protestors.
Not that Chinese government cruelty is anything new; for instance, China has been detaining, torturing, and executing Falun Gong members and members of other groups for years. Thousands of prisoners have been executed for their organs (video, 5 min 12 sec), which...

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March 10, 2008
"Love is the central ingredient in building a strong and resilient personality. It equips us with the mobilizing chemicals such as dopamine that allow us to be aggressive, to establish goals and pursue them, to stand up for ourselves and have the energy to accomplish things. It accounts for self-confidence, a 'can-do' attitude. It prevents the need for drugs...

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February 25, 2008
There are only a few universal core values required for a healthy life and a healthy society, yet there are hundreds of religious sects and political movements and parties.
The blizzard of rules, beliefs, supernatural storylines, government-as-parent schemes, god-as-parent fantasies, and all the rest of the sometimes beautiful, sometimes odd, sometimes...

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One of my favorite hobbies is trying to understand my dog. I want to grasp what might be going on in his mind and feelings and thus to get a sense of where his experience is alien to mine and where it is similar. Unlike, say, marathon running or stamp collecting, this is a hobby without clearly-defined parameters, actions, or metrics for success, but I find it compelling...

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January 28, 2008
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This is the year the corrupt corporate media loses what little credibility it still has.
Not that the Old Media deserved much trust or respect in the past; it has always been, with rare exceptions, a way for rich white men (and a few other rich people) to mold public opinion in whatever manner they desired, which typically meant "whatever manner would...

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January 21, 2008
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Two Books on Love and Freedom
I recently bought two books on A. S. Neill's Summerhill School that I'd not had in my library for many years. One was Neill's autobiography, "Neil! Neil! Orange Peel!" (1972) and the other was "Summerhill: For and Against" (1970) -- a collection of essays about the school by supporters and detractors. Among...

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January 14, 2008
In Could We Ever Justify Restraining Someone From Doing Drugs? (Part I), Danny Shahar suggests that ". . . a drug user might not fully realize the nature of the choice she is making, and so we might want to prevent her from making a poorly informed, and regrettable, decision from which she might be unable to recover." He adds, "But all I'm saying...

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January 7, 2008
~ Chinese ideogram for "Tao"
Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.
Achieve results, But...

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Crisis = Danger + Opportunity
~ Chinese ideogram for "crisis"*
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
~ Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)
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2008 will be a year to remember. Big events are coming, and the notion that crisis brings opportunity will be sorely tested.
Tipping points are approaching in several interrelated areas. The most important areas...

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December 17, 2007
We go where our vision is.
~ Joseph Murphy
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
~ literary saying
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Fundamentals
The most important fundamentals of life, beyond the purely physical, are the connected qualities of love and freedom. Whatever enhances love and freedom in our lives is a blessing; whatever diminishes these qualities is a curse. Significant...

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December 10, 2007
Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion -- human religion -- but any number of faiths. ~ M. K. Gandhi
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Misuse of the Real
Basics are important.
One of the problems with organized religion -- and with government, for that matter -- is that the basics soon become overwhelmed by the growth of trivia and...

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December 3, 2007
As soon as there is life there is danger. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Danny Shahar wrote an excellent column for STR recently (Paternalists Just Don't Understand) about drug prohibition. Shahar's column reminded me that I have been meaning to write a column of my own on the topic, covering only the two most basic arguments for freedom on this issue. So, with a...

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November 26, 2007
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Those in control of government are using the same methods to advance and otherwise improve government power over citizens as corporations such as Apple Computer or Honda Motors use to advance and otherwise improve their products. Broadly speaking, these methods are intelligently applied iterative and incremental design change.
That is not a comforting...

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"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia , and Africa , have long expelled her. -- Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an...

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November 5, 2007
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Every person knows what is wrong with the world and what would make things right. This knowledge is buried deep within us and usually stays hidden because it is painfully at odds with the world as we find it.
Yet the knowledge is there, born anew within every child. Occasionally we see this truth in action, as when someone takes a stand in favor of freedom...

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October 29, 2007
"cap'i'tal'ism (k'p''-tl-'z''m) n. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market." -- The American Heritage Dictionary
"so'cial'ism (s''sh'-l'z''m) n. 1.a. A social system in which the...

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"Paul Robinson, one of [Barclays Bank's] strategists, said: 'We're dollar bears. The dollar is coming up for an important few weeks. We expect it to get quite a bit weaker.' The bank fears that the dollar could fall to as low as $1.50 against the euro."
-- Dollar's weakness to intensify, experts warn, by...

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October 15, 2007
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Inevitably, a day will come when America's descent into tyranny stops and begins to reverse. The character, details, and timing of that day are important.
Day One might arrive via the ballot box, as most Americans would expect, or it might arrive in a different fashion. Certainly, there has been little to suggest that the American electorate would snap out...

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September 24, 2007
Love and freedom are the foundations of healthy life, both at the individual and social levels. Love and freedom are intertwined so tightly in human life as to form a single unit -- a duality.
Our needs for both love and freedom, and the fact of their connection within us at both the individual and social levels, stem from our very nature. The duality of love...

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September 18, 2007
Russell Means, the Lakota activist, actor, libertarian, and occasional political candidate, has a new film out this year -- Pathfinder: Legend of the Ghost Warrior, released this past April and now available on DVD. Despite the title and unlike Means' debut film (Michael Mann's 1992 The Last of the Mohicans) Pathfinder is not based on one of the James Fenimore...

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Preface for 2009
It has been two years since this column was first published, and despite a new Democratic administration and further scientific evidence debunking the Official Conspiracy Theory, the situation is largely unchanged. The United States is still occupying the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, causing an...

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September 4, 2007
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An Ominous Warning
Last week a warning was posted at many sites on the internet. The core of this warning was that "the backers, controllers, and allies of Vice President Dick Cheney are determined to orchestrate and manufacture a new 9/11 terror incident, and/or a new Gulf of Tonkin war provocation over the coming weeks and months."
"...

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August 27, 2007
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Within Living Memory: When Things Worked
As children in the mid-1950s, my siblings and I were exposed to the typical childhood diseases of the time: measles, chicken pox, mumps, and of course colds and flu.
When we were sick, our parents called the doctor, who came out to our home near Chicago. The doctor would arrive carrying a black leather bag filled with...

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August 20, 2007
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A Simple Question
Who are the enemies of love and freedom? One answer is: "Not always who you might think."
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Bad Frameworks and the Evils of Coercion
In Blinding by Paradigm, I described how faulty paradigms for politics (and for worldview in general) create disaster. Inaccurate paradigms actually prevent the creation of a healthier world by...

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August 13, 2007
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What is the soul?
The soul is not a supernatural construct. I see the soul as one's personality, including deeper levels that are typically beyond conscious awareness. The soul is embodied within us as software, running on the hardware of our brains and bodies.
That last is difficult for some to accept, but we have to be some type of thing, and the type of...

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Last week, a bridge on Interstate 35W in Hennepin County, Minnesota collapsed, killing five people, with at least eight more missing at this writing. "For more than a decade the state of Minnesota has known of problems with the metal holding up the Interstate 35W bridge," according to Minneapolis CBS news channel WCCO. Around the nation, 75,000 other bridges have...

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July 30, 2007
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At the Brink
There is much debate in the freedom movement, and especially in the voluntaryist / abolitionist / market-anarchist community, on whether Ron Paul's candidacy is helpful or harmful to the cause of freedom. Given the high stakes involved, this is no surprise. We face a truly desperate situation both politically and economically, with the recent...

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How odd that government--an institution run entirely on the basis of coercion (which is to say, on the basis of violence, both threatened and real)--presents itself, whenever possible, as a tool of compassion.
This mismatch between government's actual methods and its supposed goals reveals two things: first, that much of what governments do is not what people want (thus the...

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Did American liberals set the stage for Bush and the neo-cons to take over this country?
That is not a trick question, and the answer is: "Yes, they did."
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How, then? Very simply. Here is a basic outline of what happened:
First, note that a government without rules is a disaster.
Make that, "a government without clear, enforceable rules that give...

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July 9, 2007
"The task of dramatically changing the world for the better -- specifically, of replacing neurosis and tyranny with love and freedom -- only seems impossible; change happens constantly and large shifts in the character of society have occurred repeatedly in history."
-- from an earlier essay in this series, Opening Up to Paradise: My Journey to an...

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July 2, 2007
"It is not a coincidence that the merger of the USGovt and big industry has occurred while the US Middle Class has suffered a tragic income reduction since the 1970's . . . . A constant income over the past six years would have declined in real terms by 7% to 11% each year. That is roughly a 50% decline in real terms!!!"
-- Financial commentator Jim Willie...

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June 25, 2007
"Good enough for government work." -- traditional
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What People Know
Coercive government always proves to be the worst way to do anything peaceful and civilized; the combination of coercion and top-down central planning ensures this. Furthermore, everyone knows that government is the worst way to do things, even though most people don't seem to...

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"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep, debating what to have for lunch."
-- Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, James Bovard, and others
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Strike The Root has an official position on voting: don't do it. For those who have...

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May 29, 2007
"You want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country. I gotta tell you: we should just get out." -- Mike Gravel, speaking to other candidates at a Democratic debate
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Last week's column was aimed at Republicans; this week, Democrats. These are not the expected topics for a libertarian/market-anarchist site.
As I pointed out last week, making...

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May 21, 2007
"There is a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party. " -- Dr. Ron Paul at the recent South Carolina GOP debate.*
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Why a column addressing Republicans at a site that eschews the coercion of politics?
Because preaching to the choir does nothing to advance the cause of love and freedom. A more free and compassionate world will...

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May 7, 2007
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Freedom has been fading in America for more than a century – in America of all places, where "freedom" is the national slogan and where enormous personal freedom (relative to most times and places) characterized the nation's beginning.
This increasing lack of freedom in America has brought forth the natural response of a freedom movement,...

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April 23, 2007
"We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us." ~ Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949)
One way dogs and other animals illuminate the duality of love and freedom is by being the same as us, yet different. Ultimately, sameness is the...

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April 16, 2007
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-- Albert Einstein
"Everything you know is wrong."
-- The Firesign Theatre
Surely you've noticed the phenomenon: a thing is widely believed to be true and even "obvious" – and yet it is wrong. The "truth" turns...

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April 9, 2007
I am continually amazed at the dog's ability to love so unconditionally and without ambivalence. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson [1]
Q: To turn a friendly puppy into a vicious guard dog, what must you do to it?
A: Restrict its movement and beat it often.
~ Jordan Riak
In Feeling, Emotion, Intellect, I used dogs in general, and my own small dog Zoomer in...

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April 2, 2007
There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow. ~ Victor Hugo
For most of my life, I believed that a healthy world – a world characterized by love and freedom, instead of by widespread emotional damage and tyranny – was an impossibility. Even thinking about such a world, much less longing for it, seemed a waste...

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March 26, 2007
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
-- Jesus of Nazareth, as quoted in The Gospel According to Saint John, 13:34
This column was begun (and then set aside, unfinished) two years ago in response to Henry Lawton's 'The Obedient Son Sacrificed: Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" in the Spring 2005...

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April 30, 2007
"War is the health of the state." ~ Randolph Silliman Bourne
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Where is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans?(1) You know, the larger, better known, and better funded analog to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Where is the Humane Society – for humans? Surely we have such a group, but I am unable to...

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Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value--zero. ~ Voltaire
"I want to stress just how fast this all happened. By the time Serverus was crowned in 193 AD, the denarius was still the international currency, even though for the last few generations it had gradually been...

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A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it. ~ Henry David Thoreau
What do “logical” and “rational” mean?
The freedom movement prides itself on being logical and on behaving rationally, but these are relative terms. A human action can only be rational or...

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February 19, 2007
All men are brothers and each man is free.
~Rose Wilder Lane , The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority, 1943
Love and freedom intertwine in human life, forming a core duality in harmony with the ancient concept of yin and yang.
Because love and freedom are connected parts of a whole, each requires the other. A lack of love harms freedom; a...

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February 12, 2007
Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, It's sunshine
It's the word, love
-- John Lennon & Paul McCartney, The Word
In the 1960s, the first half of the Baby Boom generation began to emerge from childhood into – well, teenhood. Already...

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February 7, 2007
Civilization is sick and unhappy, and I claim that the root of it all is the unfree family. Children are deadened by all the forces of reaction and hate, deadened from their cradle days. They are trained to say nay to life because their young lives are one long nay.
~ A.S. Neill, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing (1960), page 102
Is a...

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January 29, 2007
Like characters in a gloomy sci-fi novel, many found work in the secret police, where their lack of loyalty and ability to make "friends" were saleable traits.
~ David Tenenbaum, 'Drastic Deprivation', on adults who had been raised in Romanian orphanages with massive deprivation of contact and affection
To have good manners means...

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"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree." ~ Traditional
"The Study makes it clear that time does not heal some of the adverse experiences we found so common in the childhoods of a large population of middle-aged, middle class Americans. One does not ‘just get over’ some things, not even fifty years later." ~ Vincent J....

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The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. ~ Sir William Bragg (1862 - 1942)
Trying to fix a symptom of distorted thinking, rather than attacking the root problem, is usually a time- and resource-wasting mistake. As long as the distorting lens remains in place, new symptoms will emerge to...

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January 8, 2007
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. ~ Epictetus (c.55-c.135)
A paradigm arranges the world, or some portion of it, into a mental framework. While the term is generally used in regards to science, it clearly describes thought and behavior in a much broader context. Paradigms define the importance and character of...

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January 1, 2007
It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person. ~ Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence
When introducing a...

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December 18, 2006
Imagine two groups struggling to win (or, in one case, to retain) public support for their respective, opposing causes. The dominant group has managed to define the other's name to mean 'violent, uncivilized destroyers of property and enemies of functioning society' in the public mind, despite that definition being the polar opposite of the truth.
Still, the...

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September 13, 2006
There are two great and ancient evils in this world, and the beginnings of a Power that will either amplify or help diminish them.
The first of these evils is widespread emotional damage (neurosis) – the underlying human cause of violence, addictions, racism, child abuse, intentional cruelty, inner misery, and inappropriate and damaging behavior of all...

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Part I: An Anniversary to be Thankful For
Five years now for Strike-The-Root.com! I’m hoping for many more, because STR is a favorite site. I visit almost every day, and there are two big reasons for this.
First, STR provides a daily dose of sanity, compassion, and intelligence. The...

'I believe that it is a clash of religions, not of civilizations, and I don't mean Christian against Islamist but God-fearer against Unbeliever. The latter, by definition is always in the service of the Anti-Christ. And I further fear that our awful regime, while flying the false flag of Christianity and conservatism, is in fact a Mammonite show from top to bottom and as about as Christian as...

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November 12, 2007
Last week brought two epic and polar (yet related) moments that will go down in history:
"Mark it down: A landmark moment entered the annals of political fundraising: Nov. 5, 2007.
"Texas Republican Ron Paul, the libertarian presidential candidate who has lagged in the polls but raised as much money as top-tier candidates, passed $4.3 million in online...

Birth Without Violence by Frederick Leboyer
The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff
Free at Last: the Sudbury Valley School by Daniel Greenberg
For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in...

Is coercive government a necessary evil? Or merely an ancient one?
And if the latter, why are we still confused about it?
Every argument in favor of government -- any kind of coercive government -- is utterly demolished by government's frequent mass murders and other crimes throughout history, which continue in the present...

Indeed, a hellish artifice was invented there, a horse of death, clattering in the finery of divine honors. Indeed, a dying for many was invented there, which praises itself as life: verily, a great service to all preachers of death! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, on the state1
The single most...

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The Law
Some years ago, noted philosopher Ringo Starr described an important and now-famous discovery: "Everything government touches turns to crap."
That observation clearly deserves elevation in status from the mere "something Ringo said" to the more formal Ringo's Law. Ringo's Law generates accurate predictions and explains events in useful fashion;...

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". . . a power too great and terrible to imagine."
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on Blu-Ray in April, which reminded me that I hadn't seen the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, since its theatrical release in 2001. While watching the film again I was struck anew with its abolitionist message – a message...

By Glen Allport.
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The Blessings of True Regulation in a Civil Society
Many things should be regulated – for health and safety, for protection against fraud, and for other reasons.
Regulation is a normal function of civil society. We don't want to get electrocuted when we touch a toaster or vacuum cleaner, for example, and the makers of...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Be very cautious when hearing any argument against someone that relies on a sneering tone. To put it bluntly, decent people don't use such tactics.
On the web are blog posts and columns that attempt to link Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization to Israel, or to the Rothschilds, or to the CIA. WikiLeaks, these pieces insist, is a...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information
"When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next."
CCR...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
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In plain language, there is no good reason for the unfolding Social Security nightmare. Yes, the Baby Boomers are retiring, but so what? It's a big group, but this same big group has been paying into Social Security their whole adult lives. It's not like the money hasn't been set aside or anything.
Right?
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Of course,...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Hello Wesley,
I loved your Libertarian Dilemma: Anarchy or Minarchy? in today’s Humble Libertarian (March 22, 2011). Since founding the site, you’ve shown a knack for asking interesting questions and a willingness to consider views outside your comfort zone. In this new column, you say, among other things, that “I am...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Almost unnoticed amongst the glitter and wonder of modern sci-tech is that the basic, foundational truths of classical liberalism are now exceptionally well supported by science. If you want a society that produces physically and emotionally healthy people and that fosters prosperity, innovation, and peace, you want – you need – both...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The Word
** Love. **
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Start of Commentary Section:
The Word is Complete in Itself
Nothing more is needed, because love includes non-aggression: you don't aggress against others if you love them. The Doctrine of Love and Freedom is thus completely contained in the single word...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Scientific consensus is emerging that people are fundamentally empathic, kind, fair-minded, and cooperative. Yet these characteristics are being undermined by widespread emotional damage and a corrupt system of coercive governance.
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Why So Much Darkness Staining the Light?
"The divine within me...

Column by Glen Allport.
Part 4 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Exclusive to STR
My previous column – Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift – describes our current situation, including the dead-serious threat that the Fukushima disaster poses to the entire planet, and how we got here. In this column, I will describe...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
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Column by Glen Allport.
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Part 5 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
In Part 3 of this series, Timeline of a World-Killing Paradigm Shift, I made the case that Statism, via widespread use of coercion and constant violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, has set in motion the destruction of the Earth's biosphere, bringing us...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Glen Allport.
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I bought “The Lone Ranger” on Blu-Ray this week and enjoyed it even more than I had in the theater – it's a fun, big-budget summer action movie. Then as the credits rolled, I sat and cried for about 15 minutes.
“The Lone Ranger” has been a financial disaster for Disney, despite the fabulous Johnny Depp performance...

Column by Glen Allport.
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(Spoilers throughout)
"The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy," they write, "while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."
~ Princeton...

Column by Glen Allport.
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With popular celebrity-killer Charles Manson having signed on for the second debate, the People's Socialist Conservative Party debate series was now assured of higher ratings and, finally, a real impact on the nation's voters.
Popular mega-killers defecting from the near-defunct Old Power Parties had participated in the first...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
– 1 –
If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
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Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

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February 26, 2009
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Deeper into the Wrongness
I described the common state of Wrongness in Marooned in the Quantum Wrongness Field (April, 2007). Today, the public is predictably being lured ever-deeper into Wrongness by propaganda about the economic crisis. Among other things, we are told that adding trillions of dollars in new federal debt and printing oceans of new money-...

Column by Glen Allport.
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[Part 2 of a five-part series]
How the Idea of Civil Society was Destroyed
In the second half of the 1800s, the nascent civil society in the United States, with its classical liberal worldview – including the understanding that society should embody both liberty and compassion – began giving way to the modern Left...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The Internet has been on fire lately with allegations that 77-year old Bill Cosby drugged and raped more than a dozen women over the years. Yikes.
Cosby was a popular stand-up comedian in the 1960s and has been a major show-business success ever since. He did an Emmy-winning stint as co-star of the ground-breaking I, Spy series (banned in parts of the...

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"'A lot more people were living on the edge than we ever even anticipated,' Haynes said. 'So many people were just barely making it. It's absolutely shocking.'"
~ Hospitality House spokesman Barry Frost, quoted in Economy Creates Newly Homeless by Kimberly Edds, OC Register, December 11, 2009
"There is no normality and no recovery. You cannot spend...

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[Spoilers ahead]
A month after its opening, “Avatar” has brought in more than $1.8 billion worldwide and is still packing theaters, which suggests that it may become the first film to pull in $2 billion or more.
There are many reasons “Avatar” is so popular – it is visually gorgeous and inventive, it tells a good story, and the film's casting...

Column by Glen Allport.
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"If you can understand why a bathtub empties when the drain is opened, you can understand why Americans are now as poor as church mice."
Not long ago, we Americans were rich; now we are poor. How did that happen?
Actually, Americans are worse than "poor" – Americans are staggeringly indebted, in debt beyond...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The dangers inherent in superintelligent machines have inspired any number of science fiction books, films, and short stories. From Asimov's I, Robot series (and the 2004 movie of the same name starring Will Smith) to James Cameron's Terminator and its sequels, from Johnny Depp's recent Transcendence to the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey,...

Column by Glen Allport.
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(Paper is so Fifteenth Century)
A Review of Amazon's E-Book Software and the Devices it Runs On
I resisted ebooks until recently, despite my somewhat geeky background. I've been a heavy reader since childhood, which means that books – real books, printed-on-paper books – have been a big part of my life for a darn long...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
[A five-part series]
Part 1: Civil Society Requires Non-Aggression (and one thing more)
Unless you're a hard-core libertarian, you probably haven't heard much about the non-aggression principle, or NAP. That's a shame, because the NAP is what would have saved the world from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, from the BP Gulf of Mexico spill (and...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
- 1...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
Exposed as Criminals and Psychopaths, the Coercive Elite are Desperate to Stop the Flow of Honest Information
"When Bush cancelled his trip to avoid prosecution, the human rights groups who prepared the complaints made it public and announced that the Bush Torture Indictment would be waiting wherever he travels next."
CCR...

By Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
The Blessings of True Regulation in a Civil Society
Many things should be regulated – for health and safety, for protection against fraud, and for other reasons.
Regulation is a normal function of civil society. We don't want to get electrocuted when we touch a toaster or vacuum cleaner, for example, and the makers of...

Exclusive to STR
-1-
". . . a power too great and terrible to imagine."
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released on Blu-Ray in April, which reminded me that I hadn't seen the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, since its theatrical release in 2001. While watching the film again I was struck anew with its abolitionist message – a message...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
– 1 –
If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
Hello Wesley,
I loved your Libertarian Dilemma: Anarchy or Minarchy? in today’s Humble Libertarian (March 22, 2011). Since founding the site, you’ve shown a knack for asking interesting questions and a willingness to consider views outside your comfort zone. In this new column, you say, among other things, that “I am...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
In plain language, there is no good reason for the unfolding Social Security nightmare. Yes, the Baby Boomers are retiring, but so what? It's a big group, but this same big group has been paying into Social Security their whole adult lives. It's not like the money hasn't been set aside or anything.
Right?
- 2 -
Of course,...

Column by Glen Allport.
Exclusive to STR
- 1 -
Be very cautious when hearing any argument against someone that relies on a sneering tone. To put it bluntly, decent people don't use such tactics.
On the web are blog posts and columns that attempt to link Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization to Israel, or to the Rothschilds, or to the CIA. WikiLeaks, these pieces insist, is a...